Dollhouse
by wouldtheywriteasongforyou
Summary: Hey girl, open the walls, play with your dolls. We'll be a perfect family. When you walk away is when we really play... - the town of Hogsmeade has a few secrets and too many skeletons in its cemetery.


**Author's Note:  
Disclaimer:**

Written for the Song Swap Competition (Dollhouse by Melanie Martinez) ; It's Not Your Story Competition ; Off the Block Competition "Backstroke: medium" ; Tien Len Challenge "Round Two: Card 5: Astoria, teacup, "I thought you were dead" ; Poetry Quotes and Numbers Challenge (2. "I was the owner of my own darkness."- Pablo Neruda) ; Crayon Colour Challenge "33. eggplant" ; Create a Potion Challenge "Polyjuice Potion: ingredient one" ; Hedley Song Challenge "Trip" ; Disney Character Competition "Thumper"

Inspired by a post on tumblr. Pre-read by Lizziebee.

13 May 2014. Word Count:

**Strangers simply do not wander into Hogsmeade without a good reason.**

* * *

**Dollhouse**

[-]

There's a house on the corner of Thestral and Azkaban that the Knight Bus passes on its daily route at exactly 7.42 every morning. It's a lovely house - three storeys surrounded by a wrap-around porch, a neatly manicured lawn with a white picket fence, and the stucco exterior had been recently painted a warm cream-and-beige with taupe trim. It seems slightly more standard and generic in architecture than a customised dream house, which makes it easy to assume that a picture-perfect suburban type of family inhabits the home. I bet they are lovely, whomever they may be.

It is rather unfortunate that their house is situated directly across the street from the cemetery, though. I wonder if ghosts from their past drop by in the middle of the night for a surprise visit or if the family has any skeletons hidden in their closet.

They wouldn't be the first in this almost-ghost town to be hiding something - or someone - behind their curtains.

x

Hogsmeade was only recently upgraded from the status as a village to a town. This radical change occurred when the public library was built two autumns ago. There were the typical select few in our population of 900 who were against commercialising our village ("Next thing they'll be building a shopping mall down the centre of Main Street!" an incensed Dursley said with an outraged cry), but others managed to convince the cynic traditionalists that the easier access to knowledge and information databases would be well worth the turn-of-the-century transition.

Heaven forbid we dare attempt to add in a WiFi hotspot to the tea shop next door to the library.

The library is three blocks away from the house on Thestral and Azkaban. The Knight Bus passes it on its daily morning route, too. 7.49 AM, on the dot.

x

If you live in Hogsmeade, you have to know about the Diggory's. They are the sole reason why the town is labelled on a map, and if you don't know the name Diggory, then you must not be a native. Mr Diggory hails from a famously long heritage of shrewd lawyers and politicians. Mrs Diggory is related to the crown royalty through some distant fourth cousin seven times removed. Their reputations precede them despite their insistence on privacy. They live up the road behind the ivy-lined brick wall and evergreen hedges.

The bus passes by their neoclassical mansion at 7.53.

x

The doors to the Knight Bus open at 7.55. The eggplant purple double-decker is idling in front of the only petrol station in Hogsmeade while the newest passenger steps on board. He's tall and lanky, caught in that in-between stage between a boy and man. His blue-grey eyes are as clear as the Black Lake kids go swimming in when they're trying to skive off from their classes.

"Ced!" some other teen calls out, and the boy laughs as the bus sways into motion with a creaky churn of tyres against the paved asphalt.

"Yeah, mate, I'll be right there," the boy says to his friend. His eyes search for an empty spot on the bus; he ends up picking a seat two rows in front of me.

It turns out that this Ced and his friends are easy-going blokes albeit extremely talkative. They exude happiness and radiate positivity. Each and every wisecrack they make starbursts with the same plasmatic brightness of a fireworks show. And when his friends are silent, he is too, and looks out the window pensively.

I sit down two seats behind him, and I think he is beautiful.

x

The Knight Bus is an excellent place for me to people-watch. Usually I hop off at the library stop when the route loops back through Hogsmeade (9.10 is the next library bus stop), and then I hang around in the teashop for a while with a teacup of steaming Earl Grey in one hand and a royal flush in the other. My ace of spades is my photographic memory - nothing escapes my detail-oriented brain.

But for some strange reason, today I stayed on the bus for longer than usual. I'm glad I did; otherwise, I wouldn't have had the pleasure of listening in on Ced's and his friend's inane conversation.

Mother is the one who raised me to be all eyes and ears and a whispering invisible shadow. She knows all of what's going on in Hogsmeade - who's doing what (or whom), what she said about her, Pansy Parkinson better shut her mouth lest she wants to take her business elsewhere, and so forth. People are intimidated by Mother's cultured elegance and her confidential all-knowing smile that has them spilling their secrets in a blink of an eye. She doesn't go spreading rumours about everyone's dirty little secrets, but she does know about the truth about everyone's personal lives. That scares them even more.

This Ced boy, though - he's not from around here. In my seventeen years, I have seen every single face of those who live in Hogsmeade. I would think I'd remember those piercing bluey-grey eyes from another memory.

I slouch in my seat in order to blend into the bus's background. He and his friend ("Harry, mate, whatcha got on your hand?") are comparing tattoos. Apparently Harry's newest professor is a bit of a toad and a stickler for rules. I start counting how many times I hear him mention his scar or the phrase 'I must not tell lies'. Someone a few seats over who has a glassy lazy electric-blue eye takes a surreptitious sip from a hidden flask everytime they hear Harry say the word 'scar'. Yawn.

However, my curiosity has been piqued, despite the listlessness of their conversation. Strangers simply do not wander into Hogsmeade without a good reason.

I wonder what his story is.

x

Apparently I'm not the only one curious about Ced: the usual Hogsmeade gossipers flock to the Greengrass Bistro during that first week of August to dissect all of the known information about him. I'm being a contributing family member to our business and am playing hostess as well as wiping off recently-vacated tables all whilst piecing together the snippets about Ced.

"I heard he was in jail for battery and assault!"

"No, I heard that it was shoplifting charges."

"He's a soldier for the Royal Navy."

"I heard that he's killed a man!"

Each claim is more outrageous than the last. It's so obvious to see that none of them have a clue as to Ced's true identity. The only useful information I manage to pick up is that his name is actually Cedric D and not the monosyllabic 'Ced' he's been nicknamed. No one in Hogsmeade knows what the D stands for; perhaps Diggory?

On the bus ride home, I notice that there is a TO LET sign posted in one of the front windows in the house on Thestral and Azkaban.

x

It's the second week of the month when I notice a pattern about two of the Knight Bus passengers: Harry and Cedric ride on the same days, yet they get on and off at stops independently and separate of one another. Also, another unnerving revelation is that I don't know who Harry is either. He's as much of an enigma as Ced, but Hogsmeade has somehow bypassed the boy with the lightning bolt scar in lieu of this blue-eyed stranger.

Cedric doesn't get on the bus at the same stop every single time, nor does he ride every single day. He does catch the bus before 8, though, and he acts happy every morning. He sits in different seats (all at least two seats in front of me) and gives Harry empty smiles from time to time when his mind wanders to only-he-knows where.

He also wears long sleeves in the middle of summer. What's he trying to hide? A prisoner's number tattooed on his forearm? The ever-popular Dark Mark that wannabe edgy teens ink onto their skin?

I sit two seats behind him and I think he is beautiful.

x

Ridiculous theories are running rampant in the Greengrass Bistro: stock prices are rising, the heat is nearing the record high for August, Mr and Mrs Diggory are on vacation (they never vacation), Cedric is a government spy, and Daddy ran out of freshly ground pepper to use in today's special.

There's a big Black family reunion going on at the cemetery. I don't know who was twisted enough to suggest a reunion in the middle of a graveyard, but whatever makes their hippogriff fly, I guess. The Blacks are another infamous name in Hogwarts; the Black Lake, the one that Cedric's eyes are the same hue as, is named after the family. Yeah, I don't really understand why they picked a blue lake to be called black, either.

Anyway, the Blacks are crashing at the Bistro before they tromp over to party with the headstones and tombs. The Bistro is on Thestral and only two minutes away from the cemetery; they don't have too far to stumble if any of them drink a little more whiskey than they should.

"Hi, I'm Astoria. Right this way, please," I shepherd the family of black sheep to their reserved table. Immediately the squeals of "How nice to see you!" and "I thought you were dead!" and "Where did you get that? I know just the person who would look absolutely divine in that colour!" start up. I want to gouge out my eardrums already from all of the superficiality.

Long story short, the Blacks overstayed their welcome at the Bistro and made me miss the bus. It's 16.00 pm - two hours overtime - and I'm locking up the restaurant after I've booted them out when I hear a blood-curdling scream coming from the direction of Thestral and Azkaban.

My curiosity gets the better of me. I hastily cross Thestral and head over to the picture-perfect house that's being let out to some unidentified inhabitant. During the entire trip over, I am trying to convince myself that I am simply hearing things.

The world goes still as I approach the picket fence. The road is strangely empty and it's almost too quiet out as if someone is holding their breath. I stop in front of the gate and survey the house carefully. I'm tempted to peek through the curtains to make sure everything is absolutely all right, but that idea is overstepping so many privacy boundaries. A prickle of foreboding has me tensed and on edge. No one screams again.

As I turn to leave, a fluttering curtain catches my eye through my peripheral vision. Its movement highlights a bloody hand print on the windowpane.

x

There is a boy who catches my bus who has bluey-grey eyes as empty as the lake the kids go swimming in, in winter. He doesn't belong here. I don't know where he comes from or where he disappears to. Cedric's mysterious advent is no longer the hot topic of discussion (his mate, Harry, stole that title away when word got out that he had a death sentence placed on him as an infant) but I'm still suspicious of him.

If he means trouble for Hogsmeade, I want him out of the town as soon as possible.

But Cedric doesn't seem to be much of a troublemaker. He sits with his friends and stares at his lap. When his friends say something funny, he doesn't laugh anymore. If anything, he's starting to blend into the scenery more than I do. He's photogenic and absolutely so aesthetically perfect that he blinds me sometimes, but I'm starting to see a road map of veins underneath his translucent skin. He's suspiciously pallid while everyone else is sun-kissed.

I don't understand this paradox of a person.

x

The world comes crashing down on me the third week of the eighth month. Suddenly the present-tense morphs into the past, and another candle of life is blown out. Not in the happy birthday sense, either; this is a bit more tragic.

I wasn't there when the truth came out, but Mother tells me (more like summarises) everything after hearing it secondhand from a client of hers. There's this big scandal that's headlined in all of the local Hogsmeade newspapers: apparently Mrs Diggory had an affair seventeen years ago. It would have been perfectly all right since she wasn't Mrs Diggory back then; however, this affair thing has been going on ever since. It resulted in a pregnancy that she couldn't bear to terminate.

Cedric only recently learned of his paternal heritage. They welcomed him with seemingly open arms, but what else do you do with an orphan who finds his parents who did not want to be found? I guess the discovery of his parents is what brought him to Hogsmeade. (He would have been better off not coming here at all.) Apparently he's been here since he was eleven, locked up in that shrieking shack on the corner of Thestral and Azkaban. His first day of freedom, the one where he got onto the Knight Bus at a BP petrol station, was spent trying to run away.

The screaming that I heard the other day - that was him. Mr Diggory had been punishing him for almost ruining the flawless reputation of lies that he had carefully cultivated. Mother mentioned something about physical abuse and starvation and things much, much too terrible for me to repeat. I nearly gag at the horrors Cedric experienced in that Godric-awful house.

Today's headlines read that there was a boy who used to ride the Knight Bus and was found by his parents in the cemetery after he had suffocated by digging a hole and burying himself alive. The papers say that he wrote a letter to his friend in a cryptic riddle. He also wrote a letter to his parents saying a bunch of unrepeatable things but mainly that he was sorry that he wasn't what they wanted.

And he wrote a letter to the sad girl who sat two seats behind him on the Knight Bus, and told her that she was beautiful.

[-]


End file.
